film studies at the university of colorado boulder.
Historical and material approaches to the reuse, reformation and reconstitution of existing sources from Cubism to PostModernism. Originality, appropriation, authorship, intellectual property, found footage, home movies, readymades, remixes, copyleft and free culture.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Wake, Abstractions & Abrasions

I found Curtis' In The Wake to be somewhat calming. Images such as sunbathing ladies, men and women chatting and laughing with one another gives an easy-going feel. I found these images distracting in that I hardly paid attention to the text and was mroe captivated by the found footage. The "voice" I heard that was narating was feminine; something about this film gives off a feminine feeling. The shots of nature and the poetry combined to form this sense of fragility and seems delicate.Early Abstractions is a delightful experience for the eyes. However I thought the pop music took away from that experience. I believe that the soundtrack worked at certain points, however for the most part the music severely took away from the wonderful images. What is the significance of using traditional pop love songs? "Til There Was You," "Take a Chance With Me" and so on.. Very similar to Anger's Scorpio Rising and Rabbit's Moon, where old pop tunes make up the soundtrack. Toward the end of Early Abstractions, some strange themes are presented: snakes, eyeballs, skeletons and then a baby doll- to the song "Til There Was You." Bizarre. The soundtrack to Abrasions creates tension and discomfort. Altogether, picture with image produces a sci-fi type of feel for me. There is something non-human about this film, sort of like "creating the monster" type of feeling, as if we are looking in on a scientist, whether that be Joel or perhaps Joel is the "monster."

1 comment:

", she said in pink typeface. Yes its a funny thing about reading text in a moving visual medium-- a problem we often have with subtitles in foreign film for example--its hard to watch and read simultaneously with full attention. And with this little film its all over before you know it, so watching it a few times would be wonderful.I think we've covered alot of the discussion around Smith's relationship to soundtrack (sorry I missed responding to your post till now!)but re: Abrasions, I have to say that is a great reading, 'the beast within'...